Note: As of January 2012, the Quickstart has been replaced by an easier installation method.
As of May 2020 and the release of Grouper 2.5+  you should use the procedures here. 

The easiest and quickest way to get a flavour of running Grouper is to download and run the quickstart. A quickstart is available for the latest version at http://www.internet2.edu/grouper/software.html. Currently the latest version is Grouper 2.0 and the full URL to download it is

http://www.internet2.edu/grouper/release/2.0.0/grouper.quickstart-2.0.0.tar.gz

Once you've got it, I'll assume you'll be running it on either Linux or Windows, so follow the instructions which go with you choice of operating system. You should be installing on a test machine (perhaps a virtual machine). As well as Grouper you will need:

Installation of these is covered in the following sections, with no prior knowledge assumed.

Installing the quickstart - Linux
Installing the quickstart - Windows